7 ms·

Serious question, I read about all these amazing factory line marvels and how much faster it is to create these state of the art factories in China. But I never

Serious question, I read about all these amazing factory line marvels and how much faster it is to create these state of the art factories in China. But I never understood what is giving China such a huge competitive advantage? Why does it take that much longer in Europe and the USA? Sure, we can dive into some of the political rhetoric, but from an engineering prospective, what is the root cause? Is there a price to making these factory faster (such as government subsidy)?

emiliobumachar 9y ago
I speculate that not-in-my-backyard-ism is much less of an issue in China, because people living nearby do not get as much of a say in whether to allow it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- aklemm 9y ago
  And I would speculate that issue is true throughout the whole system. With strong private property laws, fairly transparent government accountable in elections, employees with voices, and lawyers ready to do battle for any side of an issue, then there are many more considerations needed for any large project. That said, there's a whole bunch of other good explanations in this thread. Very informative.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
China hasn’t card very much about its environment, so minimal environmental reviews are required to setup a new factory. This obviously can’t continue as china becomes more serious about environmental protection.
- contingencies 9y ago
  Not true anymore. You need to submit written environmental protection plans straight up just to register a venture these days, let alone obtain the requisite licenses to operate, and corporate board members are held personally liable. It has reached the point where the default legal advice is "stay off boards in mainland China".
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    What kind of reviews are done? Or is it just based on the honor system? Also, I’m not sure how staying off the board will actually clean up their encoronments.
- justicezyx 9y ago
  Chinese government decide to cut down use of coals, and they dare to forcefully shutdown may smaller cities coal heating systems to meet the goal of using natural gas, and they force the citizens to shoulder the bill. To say it does not care about environment is just plain ignorant. Anything is planned top down. They care anything and everything, as long as there is actual value or risk.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    See: > This obviously can’t continue as china becomes more serious about environmental protection. So who is being ignorant? Or are you claiming china was doing this all along for the last 30 years? Anyways, I’ve been in a Southern chinese City during winter, I know what life is like without indoor heating.
    - justicezyx 9y ago
      Oh sorry, I misread your comments. I thought you mean they are not going to do anything because of their tracking records.
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        It’s ok. I definitely believe the situation can’t stay the same, and eventually talk and periodic but temporary crackdowns will have to instead become sustained action. Maybe that is happening now (I still reserve judgement). I get what they did rural coal heating (but I’m sure there are plenty of cold villagers who didn’t get enough subsidies to use gas or electricity). It is definitely helps the air this season, though the real test will be January and February, which were actually regressions in 2017 vs. 2016.
PuffinBlue 9y ago
They do touch on it in the article. Permits/regulations added to NIMBYs and pre-existing ageing infrastructure conspire to slow things down. Not to mention political point scoring over large job creation projects. With the rise of robot workers factories such as these might find themselves unwelcome in previously accommodating areas where their size, logistic needs and impact on the surrounding infrastructure were previously offset by job creation. So at this sort of scale it's as much a question of logistics and impact to the surrounding area as it is one of pure engineering.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  Everything you said it's obviously true. I think that's what made China attractive in the first place. Now though there also are massive Dubey effects. You want to be close to your supplies and those are in China and as I hear often just down the road. That's what we have lost and what's really hard to get back.
  - gehwartzen 9y ago
    More and more it is not only your suppliers that are in China/Asia but also your customers.
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  It's also that the mindshare of the elite in America was in software and computers until very, very recently where it's branched out to green energy, rockets, and next gen automotives. And we have Musk to thank for at least two out of the three of those. I also think the natural independent streak running through America (and Canada / Israel / UK / AUS to a lesser extent) draws more of us to software because you don't need to reach consensus to get things done.
  - willhslade 9y ago
    The "mindshare" of the US elite has been in law and finance.
Jtsummers 9y ago
One thing is momentum. In the US (and Europe) we have established factories, practices, and systems. It's hard to change those, developing countries (which from an industrial perspective much of China still is) have an advantage in that they're getting to try out the latest concepts and have no reason not to. See Japan and Europe post WWII. Both regions were devastated by war, but had the economic ability (or support) to rebuild their industries. As a result they ended up decades ahead of the US in industrial capacity and/or quality, because the US through the 1970s (and later but that's when we started wising up) was stuck with pre-WWII industrial methods and models. Propped up by large bank accounts, easy loans, and large inventory (which hides process deficiencies like bottlenecks and rework). Once pressure was put on the US auto industry (1970s, by the Japanese and the oil crisis) they started changing or failing. They had no reason to adapt until then, and even with the clear demonstration of how to work better it still took many of them decades to figure it out. You can see similar trends with respect to telecom infrastructure adoption in developing nations versus developed nations. Another advantage China has is population. When you have well over a billion people, you can afford to throw them at the problem and try out numerous things. Failure becomes an option because they have both the people to try it, and the space to try it in. Their government also has a willingness (unlike in the US, and not as common in Europe anymore) to step in and subsidize costs to encourage moving in a certain direction in order to grow their national economy. The US, in particular, doesn't do this or does it haphazardly due to the frequent changes in political leadership (we could never create and stick with a 10 year plan, for instance).
- dv_dt 9y ago
  Yup, I think the real measure of the cultural industrial repeatability comes at generational transitions in people and in tech. What happens in those nations when the next gen leadership and/or tech needs development and installation in the face of existing leadership/tech. I think you see that a little in Japan where there are some company breakdowns today because the leadership who did great in their new growth phase have basically stagnated in their thinking.
alistairSH 9y ago
NIMBYism and politics is part of it. I also suspect China, as a whole, is willing and able to move mountains (perhaps literally?) to win factories. Entire cities exist just to build "widgets" for the rest of the world. I remember a similar article/editorial that made similar points about electronics production. China has both the engineering professionals and the factory line staff on-hand to spin up massive efforts in short time. The US simply doesn't have that many people in any one place like China does.
- deadmetheny 9y ago
  They also don't really care too much about the environment or human rights or property rights. Whatever the government wants done that's beneficial for business in China will generally happen, for better or for worse.
avs733 9y ago
Flexibility of local governments and generally a 'growth before everythign else' mindset. Add to it an ENORMOUS workforce that is generally decently/well educated and socialized to accept a work culture that wouldn't work other places. Add to that snowball effects...everything else is there. Everyone else is building there....it is physically closer to things, but land is still (relatively) cheap. Compare the permitting process/cost + available land + available workforce + general cost of doing business + general government mindset + a well established supply chain to distribute products outward + a poorly tapped market for cars locally (local versions are truly terrible) + lack of political uncertainty in China as compared to Japan. Japan, Indonesia, the US, Ghana, etc. might better on a few of those metrics but the overall model makes China a minimum in terms of risk. You add to that that as companies increasingly globalize they are developing significant competencies to build factories and do business in places further afield. First this was partnered outsourcing, because it bought a partnership that knows the local affordances and externalities. Now that they have the competency, they can do it anywhere because they have learned to do it anywhere[0] and look to run the minimization routine. Toyota is actually shrinking the size of plants so they can be more agile not just in models and output but in plant location...right now the math says china, later it might say Africa. [0]https://dailykanban.com/2015/03/toyotas-tnga-tps-2-0/ https://dailykanban.com/2015/03/toyotas-tnga-tps-2-0/
JoeCortopassi 9y ago
Industry is massive and geographically nearby in China. If you need to source a different size bolt at scale, the factory for them may be 10-15 minute drive down the road. In the US, you may have to have them overnighted. The amount of raw resources quickly available is a huge competitive advantage in being able to pivot on manufacturing changes and keep lead times down
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  Yeah, this is the real reason. The pearl river delta has the densest industrial ecosystem in the world. This is was a result of China's mercantilist trade policy - e.g. suppressing the value of the yuan/subsidizing industry -> manufacturing moves to China -> ecosystem gets richer -> manufacturing becomes more valuable in China -> more manufacturing moves there. etc. It took 20-30 years to get the ball rolling before network effects took over, but now if you want a specific kind of LED or a different size bolt at scale the chances are the pearl river delta will be the easiest place to source it and if that's what you want to build, it's the best place in the world to sell it. The economic risk this presents to the rest of the world is severely underestimated. Industrial ecosystems take decades to grow and decades to decline, but access can be cut off overnight.
  - addicted 9y ago
    The vast majority of people on this board are located in geographical tech hubs. The benefits of network effects that cause software companies to concentrate in a few areas are even more pronounced in the hardware field.
- dv_dt 9y ago
  So was Detroit basically like that in its heyday?
pjc50 9y ago
I have a suspicion - although no real evidence - that this is a management and class system effect. I've often asked myself why, in the UK, we have either small boutique car firms (e.g. TVR, various F1 teams) OR factories under foreign ownership running imported management processes, but all the big domestic car firms melted away. Some clues are in the final demise of MG Rover: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/may/08/mg-rover-directors-banned-collapse https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/may/08/mg-rover-di... That's an extreme example of the problem, but I think it's endemic in the UK being so centered around the financial industry. While the middle class is centered around the cottage industry of rising property prices. The most ambitious people go into finance, not businesses where you actually have to make something or deal with employees. The factory, employees and culture surrounding that then just become tradeable tokens that will have their surplus value extracted and then discarded. Meanwhile it's hard to get ambitious, effective managers because people with that skill set are earning a lot more elsewhere in the economy. A lot of what makes a good manufacturing process is, effectively, oral culture - passed on through apprenticeships and shadowing skilled technicians. Attempts to document it are surprisingly hard (this is why ISO9001 et al are unpopular). So in order to get a good factory startup you have to get experienced staff, which is easier in a cultural location that already has them.
- api 9y ago
  I think you really nailed it. In mature economies it's no longer about creating anything but about extracting and concentrating value through financial instruments. That is so much easier. Real invention, design, and production are incredibly hard compared to just finding some angle to extract interest or profit from asset appreciation. That is also what will ultimately bring us down. I have a suspicion that a more general formulation of this effect is a major cause of why civilizations collapse.
  - akie 9y ago
    If the whole economy is built on rent seeking behavior, then who is left to pay the rent?
    - 9y ago
eip 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China
empath75 9y ago
Combination of currency manipulation, minimal ip enforcement, and lack of regulations and worker rights led American companies to start building factories in China, until they hit a critical mass.
unabst 9y ago
Short answer: Foxconn. And it's a Taiwanese company. The difference in resources and capacity are so vast, businesses like Apple have depended on these differences to make their huge profits. Steve Jobs has advocated US jobs and US factories and has said he would do everything he could, but the truth is, even Apple is/was too dependent on Foxconn, and there would be no Apple as we know it otherwise. 1. '"You can't find that many in America to hire," Jobs told the president, according to his biographer, Walter Isaacson. "If you could educate these engineers, we could move more manufacturing plants here."' [1] 2. When Apple needed to change the glass on their iPhones last minute, Foxconn obliged. The flexibility, speed, and sheer scale of their assembly operations are unmatched. [2] 3. Foxconn leverages Chinese work ethics and culture to its maximum. The world marveled at 2008 drummers in perfect sync at the Chinese Olympic opening of 2008 [3]. Now just imagine them building phones. It also doesn't help that costs are lower. So Apple wouldn't exist without Foxconn, and Foxconn wouldn't exist without China. Now Foxconn is outgrowing China, and is building factories elsewhere. But Foxconn city isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and arguable, whatever they do elsewhere will never match what they've build in China, nor will they ever cease to be dependent on its output. When Apple fails, you know the scale of the problem. -------- [1] http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/17/technology/apple-china-jobs/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/17/technology/apple-china-jobs/... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/aug/09/olympics2008.openingceremony https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/aug/09/olympics2008.o...
- bsder 9y ago
  > Now Foxconn is outgrowing China, and is building factories elsewhere. As I understand it, the problem is that China is getting too expensive for Foxconn. Wages are rising in China, so Foxconn is hunting for somewhere cheaper.
  - unabst 9y ago
    I think they're just so big and have so much money now, it's only natural for them to expand everywhere they can. In the US they will build factories and do the best they can with a US based factory. And same with everywhere else. Each location will give rise to various cost and performance attributes, but at the end of the day, they will: 1. Compete regionally with factories that share those exact same constraints. and 2. Be Foxconn. All their factories belong to them, giving them unparalleled leverage and output capacity than the mere sum of their parts. US companies will flock to Foxconn's "US" factory. It will be in quotes because nothing will stop them from doing absolutely everything beyond what will qualify as Made in USA elsewhere to minimize costs and maximize performance, as do US companies do already. But no one is Foxconn.
Spooky23 9y ago
China has lots of factories, are always building them, and have a lot of expertise around the practice. Expertise means that the architects and construction guys have done it before. The regulators get it. When I was in the business of building out and managing on-premise data centers, our team could get a project off the ground in a few days. We knew the vendors, the contractors, etc. Now? It would be tougher.
- bsder 9y ago
  China. Regulators. Uh, yeah ...

emiliobumachar 9y ago

I speculate that not-in-my-backyard-ism is much less of an issue in China, because people living nearby do not get as much of a say in whether to allow it.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
aklemm 9y ago
And I would speculate that issue is true throughout the whole system. With strong private property laws, fairly transparent government accountable in elections, employees with voices, and lawyers ready to do battle for any side of an issue, then there are many more considerations needed for any large project. That said, there's a whole bunch of other good explanations in this thread. Very informative.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

China hasn’t card very much about its environment, so minimal environmental reviews are required to setup a new factory. This obviously can’t continue as china becomes more serious about environmental protection.

contingencies 9y ago
Not true anymore. You need to submit written environmental protection plans straight up just to register a venture these days, let alone obtain the requisite licenses to operate, and corporate board members are held personally liable. It has reached the point where the default legal advice is "stay off boards in mainland China".
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  What kind of reviews are done? Or is it just based on the honor system? Also, I’m not sure how staying off the board will actually clean up their encoronments.
justicezyx 9y ago
Chinese government decide to cut down use of coals, and they dare to forcefully shutdown may smaller cities coal heating systems to meet the goal of using natural gas, and they force the citizens to shoulder the bill. To say it does not care about environment is just plain ignorant. Anything is planned top down. They care anything and everything, as long as there is actual value or risk.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  See: > This obviously can’t continue as china becomes more serious about environmental protection. So who is being ignorant? Or are you claiming china was doing this all along for the last 30 years? Anyways, I’ve been in a Southern chinese City during winter, I know what life is like without indoor heating.
  - justicezyx 9y ago
    Oh sorry, I misread your comments. I thought you mean they are not going to do anything because of their tracking records.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      It’s ok. I definitely believe the situation can’t stay the same, and eventually talk and periodic but temporary crackdowns will have to instead become sustained action. Maybe that is happening now (I still reserve judgement). I get what they did rural coal heating (but I’m sure there are plenty of cold villagers who didn’t get enough subsidies to use gas or electricity). It is definitely helps the air this season, though the real test will be January and February, which were actually regressions in 2017 vs. 2016.

PuffinBlue 9y ago

They do touch on it in the article. Permits/regulations added to NIMBYs and pre-existing ageing infrastructure conspire to slow things down. Not to mention political point scoring over large job creation projects. With the rise of robot workers factories such as these might find themselves unwelcome in previously accommodating areas where their size, logistic needs and impact on the surrounding infrastructure were previously offset by job creation. So at this sort of scale it's as much a question of logistics and impact to the surrounding area as it is one of pure engineering.

ajmurmann 9y ago
Everything you said it's obviously true. I think that's what made China attractive in the first place. Now though there also are massive Dubey effects. You want to be close to your supplies and those are in China and as I hear often just down the road. That's what we have lost and what's really hard to get back.
- gehwartzen 9y ago
  More and more it is not only your suppliers that are in China/Asia but also your customers.
3pt14159 9y ago
It's also that the mindshare of the elite in America was in software and computers until very, very recently where it's branched out to green energy, rockets, and next gen automotives. And we have Musk to thank for at least two out of the three of those. I also think the natural independent streak running through America (and Canada / Israel / UK / AUS to a lesser extent) draws more of us to software because you don't need to reach consensus to get things done.
- willhslade 9y ago
  The "mindshare" of the US elite has been in law and finance.

Jtsummers 9y ago

One thing is momentum. In the US (and Europe) we have established factories, practices, and systems. It's hard to change those, developing countries (which from an industrial perspective much of China still is) have an advantage in that they're getting to try out the latest concepts and have no reason not to. See Japan and Europe post WWII. Both regions were devastated by war, but had the economic ability (or support) to rebuild their industries. As a result they ended up decades ahead of the US in industrial capacity and/or quality, because the US through the 1970s (and later but that's when we started wising up) was stuck with pre-WWII industrial methods and models. Propped up by large bank accounts, easy loans, and large inventory (which hides process deficiencies like bottlenecks and rework). Once pressure was put on the US auto industry (1970s, by the Japanese and the oil crisis) they started changing or failing. They had no reason to adapt until then, and even with the clear demonstration of how to work better it still took many of them decades to figure it out. You can see similar trends with respect to telecom infrastructure adoption in developing nations versus developed nations. Another advantage China has is population. When you have well over a billion people, you can afford to throw them at the problem and try out numerous things. Failure becomes an option because they have both the people to try it, and the space to try it in. Their government also has a willingness (unlike in the US, and not as common in Europe anymore) to step in and subsidize costs to encourage moving in a certain direction in order to grow their national economy. The US, in particular, doesn't do this or does it haphazardly due to the frequent changes in political leadership (we could never create and stick with a 10 year plan, for instance).

dv_dt 9y ago
Yup, I think the real measure of the cultural industrial repeatability comes at generational transitions in people and in tech. What happens in those nations when the next gen leadership and/or tech needs development and installation in the face of existing leadership/tech. I think you see that a little in Japan where there are some company breakdowns today because the leadership who did great in their new growth phase have basically stagnated in their thinking.

alistairSH 9y ago

NIMBYism and politics is part of it. I also suspect China, as a whole, is willing and able to move mountains (perhaps literally?) to win factories. Entire cities exist just to build "widgets" for the rest of the world. I remember a similar article/editorial that made similar points about electronics production. China has both the engineering professionals and the factory line staff on-hand to spin up massive efforts in short time. The US simply doesn't have that many people in any one place like China does.

deadmetheny 9y ago
They also don't really care too much about the environment or human rights or property rights. Whatever the government wants done that's beneficial for business in China will generally happen, for better or for worse.

avs733 9y ago

Flexibility of local governments and generally a 'growth before everythign else' mindset. Add to it an ENORMOUS workforce that is generally decently/well educated and socialized to accept a work culture that wouldn't work other places. Add to that snowball effects...everything else is there. Everyone else is building there....it is physically closer to things, but land is still (relatively) cheap. Compare the permitting process/cost + available land + available workforce + general cost of doing business + general government mindset + a well established supply chain to distribute products outward + a poorly tapped market for cars locally (local versions are truly terrible) + lack of political uncertainty in China as compared to Japan. Japan, Indonesia, the US, Ghana, etc. might better on a few of those metrics but the overall model makes China a minimum in terms of risk. You add to that that as companies increasingly globalize they are developing significant competencies to build factories and do business in places further afield. First this was partnered outsourcing, because it bought a partnership that knows the local affordances and externalities. Now that they have the competency, they can do it anywhere because they have learned to do it anywhere[0] and look to run the minimization routine. Toyota is actually shrinking the size of plants so they can be more agile not just in models and output but in plant location...right now the math says china, later it might say Africa. [0]https://dailykanban.com/2015/03/toyotas-tnga-tps-2-0/ https://dailykanban.com/2015/03/toyotas-tnga-tps-2-0/

JoeCortopassi 9y ago

Industry is massive and geographically nearby in China. If you need to source a different size bolt at scale, the factory for them may be 10-15 minute drive down the road. In the US, you may have to have them overnighted. The amount of raw resources quickly available is a huge competitive advantage in being able to pivot on manufacturing changes and keep lead times down

crdoconnor 9y ago
Yeah, this is the real reason. The pearl river delta has the densest industrial ecosystem in the world. This is was a result of China's mercantilist trade policy - e.g. suppressing the value of the yuan/subsidizing industry -> manufacturing moves to China -> ecosystem gets richer -> manufacturing becomes more valuable in China -> more manufacturing moves there. etc. It took 20-30 years to get the ball rolling before network effects took over, but now if you want a specific kind of LED or a different size bolt at scale the chances are the pearl river delta will be the easiest place to source it and if that's what you want to build, it's the best place in the world to sell it. The economic risk this presents to the rest of the world is severely underestimated. Industrial ecosystems take decades to grow and decades to decline, but access can be cut off overnight.
- addicted 9y ago
  The vast majority of people on this board are located in geographical tech hubs. The benefits of network effects that cause software companies to concentrate in a few areas are even more pronounced in the hardware field.
dv_dt 9y ago
So was Detroit basically like that in its heyday?

pjc50 9y ago

I have a suspicion - although no real evidence - that this is a management and class system effect. I've often asked myself why, in the UK, we have either small boutique car firms (e.g. TVR, various F1 teams) OR factories under foreign ownership running imported management processes, but all the big domestic car firms melted away. Some clues are in the final demise of MG Rover: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/may/08/mg-rover-directors-banned-collapse https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/may/08/mg-rover-di... That's an extreme example of the problem, but I think it's endemic in the UK being so centered around the financial industry. While the middle class is centered around the cottage industry of rising property prices. The most ambitious people go into finance, not businesses where you actually have to make something or deal with employees. The factory, employees and culture surrounding that then just become tradeable tokens that will have their surplus value extracted and then discarded. Meanwhile it's hard to get ambitious, effective managers because people with that skill set are earning a lot more elsewhere in the economy. A lot of what makes a good manufacturing process is, effectively, oral culture - passed on through apprenticeships and shadowing skilled technicians. Attempts to document it are surprisingly hard (this is why ISO9001 et al are unpopular). So in order to get a good factory startup you have to get experienced staff, which is easier in a cultural location that already has them.

api 9y ago
I think you really nailed it. In mature economies it's no longer about creating anything but about extracting and concentrating value through financial instruments. That is so much easier. Real invention, design, and production are incredibly hard compared to just finding some angle to extract interest or profit from asset appreciation. That is also what will ultimately bring us down. I have a suspicion that a more general formulation of this effect is a major cause of why civilizations collapse.
- akie 9y ago
  If the whole economy is built on rent seeking behavior, then who is left to pay the rent?
  - 9y ago

eip 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China

empath75 9y ago

Combination of currency manipulation, minimal ip enforcement, and lack of regulations and worker rights led American companies to start building factories in China, until they hit a critical mass.

unabst 9y ago

Short answer: Foxconn. And it's a Taiwanese company. The difference in resources and capacity are so vast, businesses like Apple have depended on these differences to make their huge profits. Steve Jobs has advocated US jobs and US factories and has said he would do everything he could, but the truth is, even Apple is/was too dependent on Foxconn, and there would be no Apple as we know it otherwise. 1. '"You can't find that many in America to hire," Jobs told the president, according to his biographer, Walter Isaacson. "If you could educate these engineers, we could move more manufacturing plants here."' [1] 2. When Apple needed to change the glass on their iPhones last minute, Foxconn obliged. The flexibility, speed, and sheer scale of their assembly operations are unmatched. [2] 3. Foxconn leverages Chinese work ethics and culture to its maximum. The world marveled at 2008 drummers in perfect sync at the Chinese Olympic opening of 2008 [3]. Now just imagine them building phones. It also doesn't help that costs are lower. So Apple wouldn't exist without Foxconn, and Foxconn wouldn't exist without China. Now Foxconn is outgrowing China, and is building factories elsewhere. But Foxconn city isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and arguable, whatever they do elsewhere will never match what they've build in China, nor will they ever cease to be dependent on its output. When Apple fails, you know the scale of the problem. -------- [1] http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/17/technology/apple-china-jobs/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/17/technology/apple-china-jobs/... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/aug/09/olympics2008.openingceremony https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/aug/09/olympics2008.o...

bsder 9y ago
> Now Foxconn is outgrowing China, and is building factories elsewhere. As I understand it, the problem is that China is getting too expensive for Foxconn. Wages are rising in China, so Foxconn is hunting for somewhere cheaper.
- unabst 9y ago
  I think they're just so big and have so much money now, it's only natural for them to expand everywhere they can. In the US they will build factories and do the best they can with a US based factory. And same with everywhere else. Each location will give rise to various cost and performance attributes, but at the end of the day, they will: 1. Compete regionally with factories that share those exact same constraints. and 2. Be Foxconn. All their factories belong to them, giving them unparalleled leverage and output capacity than the mere sum of their parts. US companies will flock to Foxconn's "US" factory. It will be in quotes because nothing will stop them from doing absolutely everything beyond what will qualify as Made in USA elsewhere to minimize costs and maximize performance, as do US companies do already. But no one is Foxconn.

Spooky23 9y ago

China has lots of factories, are always building them, and have a lot of expertise around the practice. Expertise means that the architects and construction guys have done it before. The regulators get it. When I was in the business of building out and managing on-premise data centers, our team could get a project off the ground in a few days. We knew the vendors, the contractors, etc. Now? It would be tougher.

bsder 9y ago
China. Regulators. Uh, yeah ...